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Share  Tweet Friday 13th July 2018

British Orienteering Part of Change4Life Campaign Thanks to Open Data

British Orienteering is proud to be one of the first national governing bodies of sport to make our fixtures list open data. This step was taken in 2017 with a view to being able to promote orienteering events and activities to the general public and this summer will see that come to fruition.  

This summer, Change4Life is launching a campaign to get kids more active, with a media spend of £600k and outreach to 65,000 teachers helping to drive traffic towards the Change4Life activity finder. Activity providers who want to have their activities visible to this traffic will need to open their data in order to be listed in the activity finder this summer - there’s no other way to be involved! The good news British Orienteering have already done this and every time your club lists an event on the website this is published.  

British Orienteering is part of Change4Life Campaign

Open data has changed the way physical activity providers in the UK reach new audiences and increase participation. Watch this video to find out more about how this works for activity providers - here.  

However, in order for this to work for your club and events we encourage you to make sure that when your events are registered on the website they include all the necessary details that someone who doesn’t orienteer would need to book. The more information the better but as a minimum all your events should have the following registered directly in the website: 

  • Location, it’s important to use both grid reference and nearest postcode. Postcode will be used by many people as a navigation point as well as by activity promoters to put your event on their map 

  • Times, it is important to give clear indication of when the event will be taking place 

  • Entry fees, clarity on cost for potential participants is important 

  • Contact details, this is one of the most important details for those who want to understand how they can access orienteering and should preferably include both email and phone number  

  • Event website, make it easy to find additional details on the club website not just direct to homepage 

Remember Change4Life is just one example of a number of opportunities that will be open to orienteering because we have made this data open (remember, open data isn’t personal data or your customer's data - just information about your upcoming sessions!) but only if the data we provide is of a good standard. This is other organisations doing your promotion for you!  

You can find out more about the OpenActive initiative here

  

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